ICYMI: Editorial: 2014′s new laws aimed at moving NM forward
The Albuquerque Journal
By: The Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 12:05 am
http://www.abqjournal.com/370319/opinion/2014s-new-laws-aimed-at-moving-nm-forward.html
Many of the bills New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has signed into law will make New Mexico a safer, healthier, more productive place.
A few lay good groundwork and deserve follow-ups. And several important issues should be on the 2015 Legislature’s to-do list.
First, congratulations to the lawmakers involved in getting bills to the governor’s desk that:
Ban texting while driving and toughen penalties for metal theft.
Shore up finances for the state’s financially embattled rural hospitals. Fast-track nursing licenses from other states. Create a voluntary certification program for community health workers so they can be reimbursed with state Medicaid dollars rather than relying on hospitals or organizations to hire them. Require background checks for all paramedics and emergency medical service workers.
Set up the framework for free breakfast for students in New Mexico’s poorest middle and high schools. Give school nurses the authority to administer life-saving asthma and allergy medications in emergencies.
Keep the lottery scholarship program solvent for three years while requiring students to carry a course load designed to get them to graduation in four years.
Add five new judgeships around the state to keep the wheels of justice turning. Help get the judicial pension plan in the black by requiring increased contributions from taxpayers, judges and magistrates as well as setting a higher retirement age.
And put the state in line with its neighbors and the feds by allowing businesses to write off losses over 20 years rather than five.
Unfortunately, that hospital fix is around $10 million short, the breakfast program is unfunded and the wire-theft penalties are not tied to the amount of damage.
Then there’s the heavy politics of still promoting third-graders who can’t read at grade level, refusing to get tougher on repeat drunken drivers, rejecting an expansion of gubernatorial authority to ban fireworks during droughts, providing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and refusing to give the Education Secretary-designate a floor vote after she’s been on the job more than three years.
Yet the laws that did make it through this 30-day gantlet show lawmakers and the governor can and do focus on issues rather than politics. That’s evidenced by this year’s low veto rate – 10 of 91, compared to 13 of 77 in the 2012 short session.
One fiscally pragmatic bill – which would have funded a State Land Office study on acquiring federal lands that would in turn fill state coffers for education – was among the 10 vetoed, and should make it back for consideration next year.
Getting laws on the books is difficult by design, and the class of 2014, with an assist by Martinez, did a good job of making the ones passed in their session count for New Mexicans.
On to 2015.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.